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ARCHIVED - Community Joe Interview - TuffJuice

[quote][url=http://www.bungie.net/Account/Profile.aspx?uid=3734921]TuffJuice[/url][/quote]This week we interview a Virginia Tech graduate who helps run the recently created [url=http://halounity.com/index.php?section=home]HaloUNITY.com[/url].
[quote][b]Q: Let's start with something simple, who are you and where are you from?[/b][/quote]
[b]A:[/b] My name is Adam, aka TuffJuice on XBL, and I'm from the Washington DC area. I grew up here and went to Virginia Tech (Go Hokies!)
[quote][b]Q: Virginia Tech huh? What did you study and how was the experience?[/b][/quote]
[b]A:[/b] I earned my degree in Mathematics, but in my last year I got more involved in Computer Science. I ended up taking C++ and learning about Unix and FreeBSD. Virginia Tech is a great college, and even though it's been through a lot of adversity, I'd still recommend it to everyone.
Apart from classes, my experience centered a lot around working and paying my way through school. I probably worked every job under the sun, from dishwasher, to farmhand and finally made my way into a computer lab. That was definitely the most fun. I worked the graveyard shift and played endless hours of Warcraft II and Age of Empires. Needless to say I had a mean Cav rush in AoE by the time I moved on. I eventually got a student loan and finished up my last year full time. I absolutely loved my time down in Blacksburg and wouldn't trade it for anything.
[quote][b]Q: I'm sure working full time jobs along with college must have been pretty harsh. But none of this explains the username. How did the username "TuffJuice" come into existence?[/b][/quote]
[b]A:[/b] Being a DC sports fan unfortunately means I'm saddled with the Washington Wizards. Around the time that a coworker and I were registering XBL accounts, two of the stars on the Wizards were Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler. My coworker quickly grabbed an Agent Zero tag. I heard a local commentator, Phil Chenier, refer to Caron as "toughjuice" in a game, so I thought that would be a perfect sounding Halo name. I went with the "Tuff" spelling, even though tough was available, because I like Tuff Gong.
A couple years after registering with Xbox, I signed up for Twitter with the name TuffJuice. I think that was over 3 years ago. Just a few months ago I noticed a few people tweeting at me about basketball. Apparently Caron Butler just registered "TheRealTuffJuice"! Now I feel like a name squatter. I messaged him on Facebook, freely offering him the name, but he hasn't responded yet. So if you're reading this Caron, hit me up! Honestly though, I'd hate to give it up because I have such a HUGE following of 97 people, half of which are most likely his basketball fans.
[quote][b]Q: You're like a celebrity...kind of. At least you can still get babes on the internet. What was the first Halo game you got into and how did you get introduced to it?[/b][/quote]
[b]A:[/b] Kind of a celebrity.. I love that! Can I use it on my business card?
My first Halo game was CE. A friend of mine had an Xbox before me and owned Halo CE and then Halo 2 when that came out. I'd play every once in a while over at his house. My most vivid memories consist of jumping in games on xbconnect or xlink kai getting sniped constantly and sitting in respawn. I was pretty terrible, especially after a night of partying. I do remember super jumps on Ascension and flying a banshee on Blood Gultch? Or maybe it was called Coagulation back then. Anyway, 9 times out of 10 I had no idea what the objective was or which way to run on the map. I didn't really get obsessed about Halo until Halo 3 came out. That's when I first came to bnet, looking for tips on how to improve my game.
[quote][b]Q: I totally remember super jumps. I could only do a few of the simple ones and even those were really difficult for me. Do you have any other hobbies besides gaming?[/b][/quote]
[b]A:[/b] Other than gaming, I love noodling around on the guitar to the extreme discomfort of everyone around me. I was into brewing beer for a while, but that chews up a lot of time and just left me with a gut I've been working on removing ever since. I also love to play soccer and mountain bike. I was recently training for a Sprint Triathlon in August, but I had a mountain biking accident and fractured my left elbow. Ever since the injury I've been helping Firestream develop his new website, Halo Unity. The timing was so perfect that I wonder if he was part of a plot that put that log on the bike trail, heh!
[quote][b]Q: So you're associated with HaloUnity? I check that site pretty often. It's nice to meet one of the administrators. Aside from the HaloUnity project, are there any other community groups or projects you are/were involved in?[/b][/quote]
[b]A:[/b] I'm a bit of a community whore. My first group, which I never really officially joined, was called the Lone Wolf Clan. After that I got introduced to the Halo 3 Wheelmen, and played a lot of BTB with those guys. On Bnet I was a member of Halo 3 in the WorkPLace. I loved getting away from the mains and reading through their forums, which were a little more interesting to me then the endless BR spread threads and member title arguments.
Other than bnet, I used to like checking weird stats and leaderboards like Most Trip Mine kills, on Halocharts. My battle bro, Obi Wan Stevobi, had gotten more involved with them and cajoled me into participating in their community events and forums, instead of just using the site strictly for stats. I'm glad he did because I ended up getting more involved with Halocharts, especially after going to a Washington Nats baseball game with Firestream, Boss Vos, Rippinheads and SensesPanic. I chatted with Firestream, the creator of the site, about the code behind it, had some ideas on how I might be able to help, and eventually he gave me access to do my thing.
Halocharts was a social site and had a bit of a stigma that the leaderboards weren't accurate to player's skills, so I also concentrated on making them more MLG and Arena focused. Near the end of the life of the site I was in the process of integrating Justin.TV streams and Twitter as well. Those were probably my two most interesting projects on the site. We were tracking somewhere around 300,000 gamertags and had over 150,000 registered members, so it was almost a full time job just trying to keep the database optimized, introduce new front-end features and deal with community issues. When he decided to close down the site, I never had to ask why. I knew what a monumental task it was running that site, especially considering he had a full time job and family.
[quote][b]Q: I'm sure the Halo community is very grateful for what Firestream and the rest of web site staff did for them. How do you feel about being so active on Bnet and other sites?[/b][/quote]
[b]A:[/b] Oh I love it. I've always been a bit of a bit of an Internet junkie, going back to my days in the computer labs. I used to spend endless hours gaming and socializing on Kali Net, IRC channels, and even ran a fairly large open source network. My uncle was a game inventor, so gaming and my background on the Internet kind of melded together with ease. Even when I was a little kid I'd troll bulletin boards and game on my Apple II+. Nothing's changed!
[quote][b]Q: I guess some things never do change. Well, this has been a very enlightening interview. If there are any people out there you would like to give a shout out to, now's the time to go nuts.[/b][/quote]
[b]A:[/b] Heh sure... shout out to my Northern homey Obi Wan Stevobi and dude nailer extraordinaire, umd z. My coworkers in arms, Jaunxi and Butterz, and to all my battle bros... Egon, Sonic, Classified, Delphius, Gimme Shelter, Immortal, Achilles/Achronos/Hawkeye (even though they've been MIA), and everyone else I've gamed with on a regular basis! I hate that XBL Friend limit! Why do we still have that?!? I'd also love to give a shout out to Firestream, and the rest of the HaloCharts Staff. I have a huge list of people that I'd like to add, but I think I might hit some page limit. So just a big shoutout to my friends on Bnet, HaloUnity, HaloTracker, (m) @ the WorkPLacers out there and HaloTracker, and all of my other friends, you know who you are!
[quote]Interview by ECOH Cam | [url=http://www.bungie.net/fanclub/joes/Group/GroupHome.aspx]Community Joes[/url] | Admin Joe[/quote]
[Edited on 08.10.2012 11:33 AM PDT]

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Obi Wan Stevobi
I was always a bit disappointed when Tuff could be blacked out while playing and still do better than I did.[/quote]
I never met tuffJuice before Halo Unity. It's good to know a few things. Great read.
I guess the tuff juice makes tuffJucie tuff. (yeah i went there.)